Apples
by treena-ivy-carter
Summary: He had lost it all. He had nothing left. Everyone was dead, and he, Harry Potter, was the Master of Death. How could he help but save them? He performed the final rite: a Peverell secret, mixing necromancy and blood magic to return to a time before as he accepts his fate and birthright. To return to a time when apples are flowers on the tree. Time Travel, Dark Magic, etc.
1. Apple Blossoms: Absolution

Note: I have not abandoned _An Heir Slithers Once More_, I am merely trying to reach the tenth chapter and plan to publish more chapters soon enough. I stopped to edit the first two chapters and am currently on chapter five on my computer. I have 60K on my computer and am attempting to make a semblance of a story.

Summary: The Master of Death travels back in time to save everyone else.

Warnings: Character Death, Necromancy, Black Magic, PTSD, Suicide, Homicide, Inexplicit non-con, OCs (not prevalent), expansion on Peverell Brothers, OOC characters, warfare flashbacks, blood, some gore, possible references to religion though Harry Potter is not specifically religious in any way, references to Fae, to homosexuality, to pansexuality, to various deities whom I may or may not personally believe in, and this is just a global statement: **This is M-rated; are you stupid? Don't complain; you have a back button. **

Disclaimer: Imagine a world where Voldemort simply didn't die from Harry becoming the Master of Death, etc. That was very anti-climactic in my opinion – it fit the story; I would not have done that. Actually, I would have made a Slytherin Harry because teaching kids to discriminate is wrong. The world is not Good People sit at this table and Bad People sit at that table; Harry should have been a Slytherin _or _Draco should have turned (we saw hints of it; I liked that). I leave such childishness to JK Rowling and accept that _my _canon and hers differ. Also, "Absolution" is by the Pretty Reckless. This isn't a songfic, but I do recommend you listening to the songs when I mention them at the top of the chapter.

**Chapter 1: Absolution.**

"_Jump into the sun_

_Dear boy, what are you running from?_

_The answer you will find in your grave_

_Time keeps rolling on._

_I need my Absolution"_

"_Absolution" – the Pretty Reckless_

Everything was set up perfectly. The graveyard was still and nearly empty, with only countless headstones as his audience and a simple portrait of a sleeping old man propped up against a statue of a couple holding a babe and looking both too average and too heroic. A circle of blessed salt protected him with crystals at the points of his pentagram of lamb's blood. Inside of the pentagram, at the pentagonal centre, at the cross roads, a man knelt before the simple portrait with a cloak and hood and dagger. He cut his hand easily and dribbled the blood into a shape within the pentagon crossroads: a triangle, and then a line from the uppermost point to the centre of the base, and circle in the heart of the triangle to make sure he would regain his soul.

He reached into his black cloak as his palm healed nearly instantly, retrieving several items. A black stone on a silver ring glinted in the moonlight and he heard the grounds stir. He retrieved a gnarled dark yellow stick of either elder or yew, and a shimmering fabric that his eyes could not quite capture.

He peered down at the portrait whose sagely blue eyes were open and mouth was turned in a deep frown.

"Don't act like you didn't expect this," the man told the portrait, slipping the shimmering fabric over his shoulders and knotted a purple cord at his neck. His voice was gruff but young, raspy from disuse and bitterness, "You knew exactly what you were doing when you played us like checkerboard pieces."

The portrait merely shook his head, dull blue eyes never leaving a haunting, eerily glowing green.

The man gave a sharp, false laugh and said, "You made me Master for a reason, didn't you, Dumbledore? You spent your life looking for all the pieces. You knew exactly what it would do to me, didn't you? Didn't you?" He pulled the hood of the shimmering fabric over his head, revealing a deathly pale skeletal hand with only slivers of skin still hanging on.

The portrait whispered, "I never meant for this."

"Yes, you did. You knew this would happen. Your search grew even more vigorous after lover-boy left you, after your sweet Arianna died. You knew you could have done it if you had gathered all of the pieces, but what you didn't count on was," he drifted off, green eyes glazing slightly with a strangely metallic sheen. He tilted his head back to the sky, to the face of the moon right above him.

"What are you running from, my boy?" the portrait breathed into the chilled Walpurgis Night.

"Fate," he breathed back in an exhilarated voice, "Death, Luck, who knows?" What was visible of his cheeks flushed a deep, sanguine red and he shuddered visibly as the feeling approached him.

He fell to his knees, eyes on the moon, as the circle of salt bled a purple dome over him as a fulfilled protective circle. He heard the lightning cracks somewhere in the back of his head, the red eyes and thousands of followers standing outside of his circle. Would they stop him? he wondered idly. They couldn't.

His mouth twitched and he bent forwards, face falling towards the portrait so that the now-never-twinkling eyes of Albus Dumbledore could watch his once-young charge shiver with the sudden thrill of power reaching into him with such pleasure he felt his heart race, his face flush, sweat pour from his head, his thighs quiver and his hips oscillate. His breath grew heavier as the crystals charged and white lightning charged the lamb's blood to a scarlet glow and the blackened blood triangle-line-circle shape began to seep into black opaqueness.

He finally gasped out as tears began to prick his too-green eyes, "They are all dead. Everyone is dead."

"You're not dead!" the portrait gasped, "You're still fighting! Don't let this happen!"

"No!" the man snarled, falling to his side as the opaque triangle bled violet sparks to the pentagram. "Even Tom is dead!" he cried, "I'm the only one left!"

Other spirits appeared outside the circle beside the phantasm of the red-eyed one and his followers – a brunet man in glasses, a pale man with tangled black hair and grey eyes, a red-haired woman crying, a man all in black, a redheaded family with a gangly young man ruined with scars sobbing openly, a bushy-haired woman without a face standing to his side, an eyeless blond boy holding a sword, a visage of white hair and white skin and sneer of respect, and finally the spirit of a man with a beard and never-twinkling blue eyes appeared.

The portrait seized, the paint dripping as heat rose and violet blackened like vines seized the edge of the protective circle.

The living man shook violently, jerking and spasming as black vines creeped into his very skin and shimmering fabric enveloped his form. The translucent purple dome wavered as his visibly skeletal hand greyed and began to crumble around a yellow elder wand and a silver ring with an onyx stone began to crack.

The dome shook violently and the green-eyed man screeched almost like a hawk or a vulture or an eagle descending to a kill. The graveyard shook violently and the spirits gathered for the Walpurgis Night all stood as witness to the sudden collapse of the Magick.

The red-haired woman fell to her knees at the spotless ground where nothing lay but a twisted wire pair of round spectacles and shattered glass lay.

Her green eyes began to glow as she shrieked her agony to the sky – both physical and emotional agony.

Her husband fell next to her, hazel eyes glowing as well.

A scarlet-eyed man fell to his knees, and his followers with him as his eyes began to burn as brightly as the moon and the sun.

One by one they fell.

Finally a faceless bushy-haired woman began to smile as brown eyes, a straight nose and a mouth reappeared from the mass of her shattered skull.

And the universe began to collapse around them.

Somewhere else, very far away, a young boy shrieked as he awoke from a nightmare in a dark, stuffy cupboard under the stars. He breathed deeply and a bright light appeared in the darkness, an orb of blue light dancing in front of him. He extended his clean, unblemished and calloused hands and began to hyperventilate as silver runes glinting against his skin spelling out in an Old Elven tongue:

Death.

Finally he raised the young hands to his face and did not feel the spectacles that marked him as human, spectacles that anchored his soul to the Earth and represented his very personality - twisting, breaking, and bending, held together by magic and tape, but everlasting and enduring.

They weren't there.

The orb of light disappeared and he began to smile.

His eyes glowed in the darkness.


	2. Apple Blossoms: Murder

**Summary: He had lost it all. He had nothing left. Everyone was dead, and he, Harry Potter, was the Master of Death. How could he help but save them? He performed the final rite, a Peverell secret, mixing necromancy and blood magic to return to a time before as he accepts his fate and birth right. To return to a time when apples are flowers on the tree. Time Travel, Dark Magic, etc.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter _completely nor do I have any monetary rights to the characters. "Murder" belongs to Within Temptation, et al.**

**Thank you all for supporting this story. I have never had so many responses to a story so immediately. **

Arc 1: Apple Blossoms

Chapter 2: Run

_"I've been around these vicious lies too_

_"Too long to be neglecting the truth_

_"I'm getting closer and I'm fully armed._

_"...__I don't believe in judgment day_

_"But you won't be leaving here unharmed."_

— "_Murder" by Within Temptation_

He didn't seem to be aware of the passage of time, wrapped up in the feeling of summer heat and an over-encompassing loneliness as the darkness around him seemed to attempt to press around him. He shivered briefly – not from cold, for there was none, but for the sudden onset of ramifications impressing themselves upon him.

He fingered the silver waves extending from the valleys between his knuckles to the centre of the back of his hand, where the lines converged into a base. It was the rune for death, he knew, and the rune for the yew tree. His hand seemed so bare without his ring – by birth and by blood – and onyx stone. His arm seemed so smooth without the rigged scars and without the leather holster and without the wand of elder. He seemed so cold without the shimmering fabric of his cloak hiding him from view.

The world seemed so loud outside his cupboard with everyone still alive.

Death cannot be defeated, he knew. Death cannot be beaten. He could not win against Death. No matter what he did, everyone would still die.

And yet, on the tombstone-statue of a woman and her husband and their babe between them, a pedestal beneath them decreed: the Last Enemy to be Destroyed is Death.

_Do you hate me, Mother_? he wondered idly, _Do not despair, for this is the path I have chosen._

Apple Blossoms

The quill slashed across the parchment as he nursed an idle tea – an oolong blend – and several lemon drops. He twirled fingers across his long white beard that he could have tucked into his belt, if he so wished. His cloak was a vibrant red-violet and had little snidgets dancing across the ultramarine sashes. He wore a floppy, ragged brown pointed hat with a white speckled hawk feather dancing around the rim.

His portrait did not give him justice.

Albus Dumbledore presented himself as a simple but flamboyant man – candy-crazed, eccentric and overtly powerful, but nonetheless childish in his flashy colours and gaudy jewellery. His bare feet slipped out of his handmade buckle shoes (dating back to the eighteenth century). He hated his feet, he pondered to himself, he truly did. Only beloved Arianna could make socks quite correctly.

Nobody did it right anymore.

Nothing did anything right.

A blazing green and blue light glared from his fireplace. His twinkling blue eyes raised and he sipped demurely at his oolong, jumping at the chance for company, "Richard? How do you do? Why are you calling? Would you like to come through? Would you like a lemon drop – "

"Headmaster," the awkward man in a dark purple robe tried to edge in.

The headmaster stood with a flourish and waved a hand, "Come in, come in, Richards. I've been so lonely in this castle. Come visit with an old man, eh? Do you need tea? Black? White? Chai? Red? Oolong? You look like a jasmine. Do you like jasmine blends?"

"Headmaster, this is about the Veil," the man declared quietly.

The elderly man stopped mid tirade, stopping over his teapot, "What?"

The words gushed out, "The Veil suddenly grew very erratic last night at midnight. Mary Elecity and Selena Lovegood collapsed because apparently it began to shriek – even people who don't hear the veil felt a grave pressure on their heads for a total of forty-two seconds. The Archway to the Veil also started to crack and a grave but minor earthquake shattered a few time turners in the Time Room – and how an earthquake of all things was focalised on a single room we have not yet discovered – "

"Crack?" Dumbledore breathed, eyes widening and eyebrows drawing together in worry. His gnarled hands abruptly put down the teapot and abandoned the teacups on the table as he looked the young Unspeakable in the eye.

Richard shook visibly through the flames, "Y-yes – and runes started carving into it, more than the runes of secrecy and protection."

"What were the new runes, my boy?" he whispered quietly, "You must tell me. It is of the gravest importance that I know what these particular runes were."

"They were runes of death," he choked out, "It wrote out again and again in the runes – Death hath Come, Death hath Come, Death hath Come – and it didn't stop until the horrible shrieking stopped. Selena Lovegood has reported that for the first time in her lifetime, the Veil was silent. It did not speak any longer."

Albus Dumbledore sat heavily in his chair, and stared into the depths of his teacup, wishing he could See as Syball did, so he could discover a way out of this. He begged silently for a future where this did not happen. How could this have happened? His inner voices shrieked in curiosity and despair. He turned back to the fireplace and whispered, "No whispers? Was the Veil visible?"

"None, sir. No whispers, and yes, a tattered tarp disintegrated in the Archway. Selena – in a fit of hysteria – lunged towards the Archway, and," he paused briefly to take in a shaken breath, "She was fine. She simply ended up on the other side. The Archway was practically useless."

Albus suddenly gave a startling growl and hurled his cup across the room, and it shattered next to Fawkes' perch. Fawkes flinched and disappeared in a bit of flame, "There was nothing?" he demanded.

"Nothing, sir," Richard whispered.

"Nothing at all?" he shouted at the flames.

The head in the flames visibly flinched and whimpered, "You said you needed to know if that happened – if the whispers ceased. I was only doing what you asked."

"I'm not mad at you, Richard, but," he paused briefly to try and draw in a composed breath, "Was this an _isolated _event, or – "

Richard descanted quickly, nervous about another shouted word (the Department of Mysteries was often near silent), "In Jerusalem, the Veil of the Temple was also rendered useless. All of the rabbis and their wives committed suicide in synch. One of the daughters of the Jews – she was rendered to the state of a five-year old in her head – she was crying something about the Messiah and David and Abram.

"And, and in Greece, one of the Oracles wrote of a Great Coming before killing all of the Vestal Virgins that attended to her and killing herself.

"And in Turkey, at the Plutonian in Hierapolis, apparently hordes of spirits and bodies reanimated straight out of the ground – the Turkish Ministry is still casting Fiendfyre and have self-quarantined themselves. All Turkish residents are firmly stuck within the Turkish border.

"And in the Chinese City of Ghosts, a river suddenly broke through and ran red with blood – allegedly – and the Magickal Officials are still Obliviating the masses.

"And, the River of Acheron disappeared. Entirely. Reports are still being owled in worldwide and the Wireless is still going off at HQ." Richard finished blandly and with a touch of nervousness still permeating his figure.

"Merlin. Does Minister Fudge know? Does the ICW know? Do the _Muggles _know?" he whispered portentously.

"Not yet. You, ah, you demanded to be notified immediately if the Veil ever cracked or went silent or suddenly ceased working," he said promptly before breaking out in a sweat once more, "Master Unspeakable also wishes to know if you have an explanation for why this is all happening. No Seer has prophesied this and we are still being notified of Oracles going mad globally. W-what is going on? Do you know, sir?"

"Lord Voldemort has gone and united the Deathly Hallows, Richard. Somehow, in some way, Lord Voldemort has become the Master of Death," Albus declared easily.

"He's back?" Richard asked faintly, monotonous, shuddering within the flames of the Floo.

"Yes, he's back," Albus Dumbledore promulgated, the twinkle in his eyes breathing its last.

Apple Blossoms

The door to the cupboard opened and a willowy, long-necked, blonde form appeared, sinewy as a young apple tree. Her face was twisted heartlessly, but he was struck with her youthful beauty. She was on the edge of homely, he knew, but she was also graceful and had a lot of things many women would die for: an elegant, straight nose, slim arms and a thin form, straight light-blonde hair, dark blue (near purple) eyes, high-arched eyebrows – but she was also cruel and petty and vicious. He doubted if he had ever seen her smile in his life.

"Get up!" she snapped at him.

He blinked at her owlishly and without a discernable expression. A pressure hummed in the back of his head and scarlet symbols briefly shimmered across her forehead. He blinked again and they had disappeared.

"Are you deaf, boy? I said 'get up!'" she crowed irritably.

He still didn't falter in his motionless stare.

She rolled her eyes and lunged forwards to grab his arm and yank him out. As she went to jerk him out, he stepped back easily, just out of her reach.

Her lip curled and she snarled, "You stupid freak!" She raised her hand to slap him but her hand froze in mid-air.

He cocked his head and his lips twitched slightly. He whispered gruffly, hoarsely as if he hadn't spoken in years, "What year is it?"

"Bloody hell, you freak! Let go of me!" she screeched.

"Answer me," he ordered with a hint of forced clemency. His brow twitched and her wrist began to redden with sudden pressure, as if a large hand was holding her wrist captive and she couldn't flee.

"You bloody piece of shite! Stop this freakishness right now!"

He turned his head so it was cocked the other way and the carpals in her wrist suddenly shattered. She squealed loudly like pig.

"Tell me the year or I do that to your head." The red symbols blazed brightly against the skin of her forehead before dissipating easily. He wondered what they were for, what they meant, and if it mattered, before he remembered the task at hand.

She was openly crying by then, "It's 1990 – July thirty-first in 1990! Let me go! For the love of God, let me go!"

He released her hand from his 'hold' and she immediately cradled it to her chest. It hung uselessly from her arm and he merely stared. _What was that? _he wondered. _Where did that come from? _But what exactly he was referring to – the woman or his own magic – he remained unsure.

He knew very well that this wasn't _his _Petunia, the one from _his _time.

This was housewife Petunia. Hatred-made Petunia. Mrs. Petunia Dursley, mother of Dudley and loving wife of Vernon, not General Petunia Evans, vilomah and widow – childless and husbandless. His Petunia was a warrior who would have snapped her own wrist if she could have seen her younger self. This Petunia was a pansy flower – frail and beautiful to some – where his Petunia was a knife in the dark, a mountain in the ocean, a callused hand that protected the children with her life and being.

It was all very confusing.

She stared at him, a peculiar, unfamiliar fear in her violet eyes and her rapidly bruising wrist cradled to her breast. Her arms were soft, and her legs were twiggy. She was not armoured, toned and chiselled nor was she fearless and blazing in the heat of battle.

His Petunia would never exist.

He inched out of the cupboard and the woman flinched from him. He entered the kitchen, hand drifting along the marble countertops and the silver sink. State-of-the-art microwaves and toasters and blenders. Stainless steel and polished porcelain. The window was spotless and had flimsy, frilly yellow curtains made of lace and embroidered with silk. His finger reached out hesitantly and his not-Petunia observed a slight sheen in those unforgivably, unnaturally bright eyes. He didn't touch the lace and silk however and he pulled back.

He turned again and looked at her dismissively, "I am ten?"

"Y-yes," she stuttered, surprised he spoke to her at all.

"That's alright. I have a year until Hogwarts then."

"Who told you that?" she hissed, cheeks reddening.

He rolled her eyes, "Honestly, woman. I don't know why you even bothered hiding it from me. You know that there is simply no way for magic to be stamped out – short of severe magical illness or invasive, continuous torture. You shouldn't have even bothered."

"What is wrong with you?" she breathed, "Who – why do you know such things?"

He spun, green eyes meeting violet, "I don't need to tell you. You don't need to know. You don't deserve to."

"You broke my wrist!" she shrieked before flinching away from his stoic face. She whisper-shouted after a moment of apprehension, "If whatever you know made you break my wrist, I'm going to throw you – ask you to leave," she corrected herself, hastily.

He simply stared at her. He spoke, "Where's Dudley and Vernon?"

Her eyes widened and hardened like amethysts. She squared her expression and her lips thinned. She lifted her jaw, dropped her injured wrist and said simply, "I'm not telling you."

His face hardened, he pursed his lips and simply sighed. His green eyes were hooded as they pinned her in place. "Do you want to know how you die?" Harry whispered.

Her brows furrowed.

"There is a war. World War Three. Except, instead of the world against Germany, it's the Muggles versus Wizards. Everyone dies," he told her, nodding simply, "Your husband dies by my wife's hand and she is burnt alive in London on national television. Your son is publicly hanged because he protected his daughter – who was born a Witch – and sent her to the haven for Wizards in China. You? You become a General in the International army that was crusading against us. You killed my best friend. You mutilated my brother-in-law. You tortured Draco into insanity, because you could. And in the end, it didn't matter. For the first time since the beginning of time, the Dark and Light forces of Magick united against you, and we killed you all. And that killed us.

"All except for you. And for me. You shot yourself within a month. I was thirty-four. I killed myself, too, when I was forty-one."

"H-how do you know this?" she gasped before scowling, "You're lying."

"Maybe I am," he conceded, "but maybe I'm not."

"Duddy wouldn't have a freak kid."

Harry rolled his eyes, "You idiot. It's _genetic_. Do you know what that means? It means that Magick is an inherent hereditary trait. It is on our DNA. We are a more evolved human. We aren't exactly a different species – yet – but we do have different DNA than Muggles do. Muggleborns are advancements of the genetic code. One extra gene is all it takes for magick to manifest. My mom had it. My best friend had it. Your granddaughter had it. Hell, if you have more kids that just Dudley, one of them might have it, too."

"Even if what you said happens – which it won't, because you're a delusional little freak – how would _you _know this?" she hissed, wary of the window and of the boy.

He shook his head, "I'm telling you this so you realise the severity of your actions. Your husband dies because he shared your idea of magic being inherently evil and freakish. He gets himself killed. He widows you. Your son? Your precious baby boy? He is so afraid for his own daughter that – unlike you – he ships her off to China and never sees her again, and he dies for you and your husband's beliefs. And you end up alone and insane and you kill yourself."

"You're insane," she declared, "You belong in the looney bin!"

"And what is the hospital going to do when I tell them how my Uncle Vernon whips me with his belt every night and how my Aunt Petunia doesn't feed me for weeks on end as punishment, and how my bedroom is the cupboard under the stairs?" he leaned in and breathed across her face, "How normal is it to be arrested for child abuse?"

"You are not my nephew," she breathed back, "You are some freakish apparition. You're that Dumbledore man playing tricks on me!"

He laughed harshly once and said, "I'm not that boy you hit over the head with a frying pan yesterday. I'm not that boy who knuckles under because I know of no other way. I survived two wars. I survived _you_. I am a Wizard. I am a freak. I am," he trailed off, before grinning severely, "I am your worst nightmare."

She backed up, leaning up against the countertop because he was stepping closer. His eyes were bright and wide like a normal child's but his mouth twitched in places, and his fingers spasmed.

"I just want you to reel in your husband, and feed me," he murmured, "Is that so much to ask?"

Unbeknownst to him, her fingers scraped behind her and met the steel of a knife. She grabbed it and lunged forwards.

The steel against his stomach and the sudden rush of blood surprised him. He stared at her in surprise and looked down at his abdomen, not comprehending the black handle protruding from a place above his navel. He blinked and fell to his knees, "How are you going to explain this to the neighbours?" he asked her idly, voice monotonous and high-pitched like that of a five-year old rather than a ten-year old.

She blinked down at him, breathing harshly. "Why aren't you dead? Bloody freak!" she yelled at him.

He looked up at her and said, edging on hyperventilation, "You fool. You bloody fool. _I can't die_."

The knife was ripped straight out of his abdomen, turned in mid-air and impale the woman straight through the eye.

She slumped down to the floor and made a nice smear against the countertop.

Apple Blossoms

He blinked and he was face to face with a perfectly healthy and alive Petunia, who was glaring at him with hatred. Her arms were crossed over her bust and both of her wrists were fine. The scarlet symbols on her forehead blazed once, twice, thrice before disappearing into her skin.

_A vision?! _he thought wildly, _I don't have visions._

But he was so sure….

She was dead, on the floor, in the kitchen.

She reached in and grabbed his collar, hauling him out of the cupboard.

"Aunt Petunia?" he began quietly.

"Shut up, freak. I have no idea what happened to your glasses and I'm not getting you anymore. You were the one stupid enough to lose them, not me!" she snapped.

He couldn't ask about the vision, then. It was only a….

A what? A daydream? When did he start having daydreams about murdering his aunt after she stabbed him? He never truly wanted her dead before. He had moments of weakness, yes, where he just begged anything in the universe for him to be taken away or found out about or for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia to be killed in a car crash like his own parents (or so he thought at the time) so the Queen would have him sent to a foster home, but that was years ago!

Of course, he wasn't exactly forty-one anymore.

"Aunt Petunia, what day is it?" he asked suddenly, interrupting her tirade (that he hadn't a heard a lick of).

"It's July thirty-first, freak," she looked at him sharply and her too-arched eyebrows dared him to even mention the fact that it was his birthday.

He nodded, "Thank you, Aunt Petunia. Would you like a full English breakfast or something else?"

Her eyebrows twitched and her lips pursed but she said, "A full breakfast will be fine."

He went into the kitchen and began to work on breakfast for the first time in nearly two decades.

Apple Blossoms

"Somebody retrieve Harry Potter and put him into protective custody!" he yelled for the eightieth time into his Floo.

Arthur Weasley stood by, watching Albus Dumbledore try and convince everyone that He-Who-Not-be-Named had returned.

Apparently, no one believed him.

Now, Arthur Weasley was a rational man, or liked to think of himself as so, and when Albus had Flooed him to tell him that his children and his wife were now in severe danger once more after a decade of reconstruction and peace, he had calmly sat down, sipped his tea and said, "What proof do you have?"

Albus, of course, never provided anyone with proof.

Hours passed with Albus screaming himself hoarse as he tried to facilitate an army of Wizards against You-Know-Who, but no one wanted to listen.

It had been a decade of peace. Harry Potter Day was coming up in a few months and a parade and a ceremonial tree planting was going to take place.

Nobody wanted another war to occur, so in true English fashion, they ignored it.

That was, of course, until one of the trinkets around Albus' office began to ring and squeal with bright red letters glaring: Harry Potter is in danger!

Apple Blossoms

He worked with a quiet monotonousness that made his aunt very nervous. The red letters on her head returned every so often but the visions did not come again. He looked at her once or twice an hour and saw the symbols but they didn't really mean anything to him. He actually wanted another vision so he could prove to himself that he wasn't entirely insane.

Something. Anything. A car crash. An unfortunate knife. A slip on the staircase. A burglar. Something! Sometimes when he looked at her he got a strange feeling of imminence, and behind his eyelids he sometimes imagined her with blood all over her temple and dead violet eyes. Almost like when he discovered her body on the living room floor and her brains all over the wall.

It was nearly six post meridiem when Uncle Vernon came home. He was washing the dishes when Uncle Vernon arrived and he had truly forgotten to prepare dinner. Petunia hadn't yelled at him to do it as she did at lunch and he hadn't volunteered to do it as he did breakfast.

Dudley scurried in first, passing through the kitchen and punching his cousin mid-jog, sending the much smaller boy off-kilter. Vernon lumbered in with his hulking form and kissed his wife on the cheek and then he said, "What's for dinner?"

Petunia's eyes widened as well. Both her nephew and she were slim naturally and simply did not get hungry as often as other people did. It was a simple mistake, "Um, what's for dinner? We're having – lambchops! Yes, lambchops and they are in the oven."

He frowned, his bushy moustache moving over his lip like a caterpillar, "When will it be ready?"

"Half an hour," Harry told him, peering into the room.

The large man turned and his face immediately reddened, "Freak! Are you trying to starve me?!"

"No, sir."

"Get in your cupboard!" he suddenly yelled, screaming and walking – well, waddling – forwards towards the much younger boy.

"Sir, I'm cooking dinner," he simply said. Inwardly he cursed; this wasn't supposed to happen.

The man snarled and grabbed the boy by his collar and threw him against the wall. White exploded behind his eyes and he found it rather hard to breathe.

His too large hands and walrus face leaned into his own form and he hissed, spit flying everywhere, "You goddamned freak, good for nothing waste of space! Get in your cupboard! And don't give me any cheek about it or I'll do more than toss you!"

With a sudden burst of suicidal impudence he replied, "And if you don't stop putting your grubby hands all over me, I'll do much worse than spit in your dinner."

Petunia gasped somewhere in the background. At that, Vernon stood up, unhooked his belt and snapped it against the air. He raised it high above his head and went and….

And the belt came down.

Apple Blossoms

The old Wizard appeared on Privet Drive for the first time in nearly ten years and raced up the steps. He reached for the doorknob but his own wild magic burst the door off its hinges and he stopped dead in his tracks at the scene met with him.

Blood was everywhere. Tom had already come and gone it seemed. He gasped, taking in the horrible sight and the scarring smell of blood, and covered his mouth and nose with his arm as he shot off a _lumos _and a _homenum revelio_. Four bodies, yes. He stepped gingerly over the threshold and through the doorway.

Red lines covered every wall, as if the ceiling itself was bleeding. He raised his wand, following the red outlines of bodies courtesy of the human-revelation spell. He reached the kitchen and slowly, ever so slowly, opened the door, willing himself to stay awake long enough to see if Harry had suffered before he died. A voice in his head that sounded surprisingly like his brother at his sister's funeral, "Of course he suffered, Albus, he was tortured and never had a day of happiness beforehand! Which is, by the way, you're fault!"At the time, though, he had used a feminine pronoun because he spoke of Arianna rather than of Harry. Another causality that occurred because he failed in his responsibility to protect the innocent.

How many more deaths would he survive? Why, Albus despaired, oh, why had he tried to do it legally? Why did he try to have Harry Potter put into Ministry-paid protective custody, rather than Apparating immediately to Privet Drive and taking the boy himself, straight to the wards of Hogwarts? Now, the boy, the only chance for the future, was surely dead and forever reliving pain in his death.

He was only ten.

The kitchen door opened and the light showed a grisly scene.

A woman was crucified against the wall in a mock cross, with knives stabbing into her hands, her elbows, her breasts, her abdomen, her feet, her knees, her neck and her eyes. This, he breathed inwardly, was what became of little Tuney Evans who begged and pleaded to be in Hogwarts, too. With such a gruesome death, she must have attempted to protect her nephew and her child with her life.

A young, round boy with a shock of blood-stained blond hair – Tuney's child, not Harry – was in pieces on the floor. Tom always did like rending rather than mending. The child had no blood in him, and no blood was in Tuney either. This must be why several gallons of blood continued to cascade down the walls and pool onto the floor. He always did like dramatic scenes. Dumbledore remembered him performing theatrics in that one disastrous play so long ago – he enjoyed the blood and the smoke and even the incident that called for another play to never occur again.

On the other end of the room was a large corpse without fat, skin, muscle, or tissue. He was at the centre of a pentagram of blood. Every bit of innards had been removed and every bit of cell that made him more than the burnt skeleton he was. And yet, no Harry.

The boy couldn't have been taken, surely! Raised by Tom? Twisted by Tom? Tortured by Tom, until he was nothing but another Dark Lord? No, that would be much worse than his death in this house! – Or would it? He'd still live long enough to slay Tom, but he might take the mantel of rule himself! Where was Harry Potter?

The outlines caused by the _homenum revelio_ had dissipated, but he was hesitant to cast it again, if it was not Harry. It could be a vengeful Wizard cleaning up his master's mess who would not hesitate to kill Albus Dumbledore.

In the dining room, he discovered as he opened the other kitchen door, was an elegant table with a white cloth and four plates set out. Four martini glasses were filled with pus – he gagged – and eyeballs with toothpicks through them. Four platters had cut intestines stuffed with burnt flesh and blood – a humanoid kishka – with a side of what he identified to be portions of a brain.

Tom had _wanted _to kill this family. He wanted to make a statement.

And yet, Harry Potter was still not there. He continued into the bloodied den and spied an abandoned belt and a cracked screen of one of those Muggle picture boxes. He passed a mantle and peered briefly at the pictures. None of Harry. Was the house Obliviated of Harry Potter's presence? Only very powerful Wizards could erase a Wizard from inanimate objects and of the surrounding Muggles with one spell. Of course, he reminded himself, Tom Riddle was nearly as powerful as Salazar Slytherin or Albus Dumbledore.

He reached the staircase and went to go upstairs, but he heard a muffled sound from a cupboard with nearly five deadbolts on it that sat underneath the stairwell. He took in a startled breath but otherwise steeled himself. He cast an _Alohomara, _reached for the knob and gently opened the cupboard, completely expecting a young boy's body to fall out of it.

There was a young boy inside of the cupboard. He felt tears prick at his eyes but quickly suppressed them, as he had for than a half-century by that point. He bit his tongue and pushed the glowing tip of his wand into the dark cupboard. He would see his charge, just once, before he had him cremated.

His face seemed intact though it was completely caked in blood. His clothes were torn and ruffled and blood-stained severely. His black hair was melded against his head with the browning fluids but some placed were ruffled upwards as if he had been dragged in and locked in the cupboard. Did his aunt or uncle shove him in to protect him, unaware he was already silenced?

Or had Tom took out his rage on the boy and then let him bleed out in the cupboard after murdering his family in front of him?

He went out to pull the boy out of the cupboard when a glint caught his eye.

Green eyes reflected the light.

"Harry?" he gasped.

**TBC**


	3. Apple Blossoms: Lonely Child

**Summary: He had lost it all. He had nothing left. Everyone was dead, and he, Harry Potter, was the Master of Death. How could he help but save them? He performed the final rite, a Peverell secret, mixing necromancy and blood magic to return to a time before as he accepts his fate and birth right. To return to a time when apples are flowers on the tree. Time Travel, Dark Magic, etc.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _Harry Potter _completely nor do I have any monetary rights to the characters. Secondly, I don't own "Lonely Child" by Christina Perri. **

**Firstly, I'd like to apologise for the wait. Secondly, I'd like to verify that this is very AU including the events leading up to WWIII: the war between Muggles and Wizards, even though Harry did defeat Voldemort, marry Ginny, and have those three kids. However, we do not see the _N__ineteen Years Later_ epilogue. **

**I have adjusted the years a bit. In my timeline, the war with Voldemort was nearly three years long and had pulled in foreign allies but the Muggles were unaware up until the Prime Minister of Britain was publically assassinated. Muggles were mass-Obliviated globally and were told the minister had died in a car crash. However, stuff happened and the Muggles discovered the truth. James Sirius (or Jay as he's called) I had "conceived" somewhere in the middle of March and was born at thirty-six weeks in October on the 31st. This was the second year of the Wizarding War with Voldemort. After the murder of the Minister, Harry assassinated Voldemort, survived torture for three months and two days before Malfoy (this is basically the chapter where Harry is at the Malfoys but it is much worse and he's held for longer) assisted in his escape. He, Draco, was punished severely, but survives. The Wizarding War ended on Tom's birthday (New Year's Eve) in 1999 (going on 2000). In November 2001, Al is conceived and is born on September eighteenth in 2002. In December 2007, Lily is conceived, and she is born in the middle of 2008. Jay is eleven, Al is seven and Lily is nearly one when WWIII starts in 2009. Harry is twenty-nine. Ginny is twenty-eight. Draco is twenty-nine. WWIII ends when Harry is nearly thirty-five. He goes back in time when he forty-one. **

**To recap for older readers, Harry travels back in time using necromantic ritual that summons millions of spirits from the grave and ultimately takes his life, wakes up ten years old in the cupboard, has a mysterious vision where he murdered Petunia but awoke to realise that hadn't happened, and Uncle Vernon starts in on him. _Meanwhile, _Albus Dumbledore receives news that the Veil (i.e. thing that killed Sirius) in the Ministy, along with other entrances to the land of the dead have ceased working and comes to the conclusion that the Master of Death has come along, and that Tom Riddle is said Master of Death. He eventually heads to the Dursleys to see that they have been attacked and finds Harry in the cupboard and realises that under some miracle the Boy-Who-Lived is in fact alive. **

**Arc 1: Apple Blossoms**

**Chapter 3: Lonely Child**

"J_ust as dark as the night went_

"_I lost my mind, I lost control, down, down, down_

"_You let me steal my love for my soul_

_"And I remember all the words that you wrote."_

"Lonely Child" - Christina Perri

"Happy birthday, Al!" he called to his son.

When the bombs fell for the first time, he was with his wife. It was his son's birthday. He was seven. Ginny, he remembered, was holding baby Lily, his little girl. Jay was at Hogwarts (first year), thank God. Little Al was clapping and laughing and giggling, cheeks round and flushed, as happy as any healthy, loved child on his birthday. He was Harry's spitting image. Black, flyaway tangles, green-as-grass eyes blazing with the intensity of a thousand suns, tan skin that offset his mother's pale tones, and a grin that would probably make everyone's heart swoon and require many baseball bats and _impedimenta_s to ward off suitors. Lily, her pale face already angular, and her tuft of bright Weasley red hair curling easily atop her head, was of course the exact image of her mother, down to the eyes and the nose. She was, even as a babe, perfect and quite intelligent. James, with his straight chestnut brown and hazel-blue eyes and pale, freckling skin was a perfect blend, with a quietness reminiscent of Harry's own childhood and an intelligence to rival Aunt Hermione's.

He was cooking hotdogs over the grill – as Muggle as possible – and listening to his wife saying something that was drowned out by the sudden vacuum made. He remembered looking up at the bright blinding light, mouth still half-frozen in a smile as the rocketed shape hurled over the sky and grew imminently bigger. Ginny, he barely recognised at the time, screeched and literally leapt over the table, hugging her daughter to her chest and grabbing her son by the jumper to pull him under her body as well.

The explosion still rings in his ears every night. The ground shook, sickeningly violent, and he remembered the backlash of dust surging forth against him. He heard somewhere in the back of his mind women screaming, including his wife and his little baby girl, as houses crumbled where they stood. Some cars were hit and others were trapped under houses.

Some exploded themselves – the leftover fire from the impact igniting gasoline-tanks – and the metal flung forth. He had raised his hand, jerked his wand out and tried to raise a shield.

For the second time in his life, his holly wand – _holly, phoenix feather, eleven inches _– cracked, except this time, it was completely incinerated as the second bomb dropped, millimetres from where he was standing. His hand was completely gone, and his sight and hearing nearly with it. He remembered his vocal cords burning as he shrieked but he couldn't remember the sickening sound. He couldn't remember his wife racing towards him as more dropped from the sky. He remembered Al's crying face. He remembered Lily, his baby girl, being held so tightly in her mother's arms.

He remembered the fifth and sixth bomb, within a metre of one another, how they were on both sides of his family and him as they ran for cover. Ginny's wand had foolishly been left in the house that was now a crater in the ground. The Wizarding village they were living in had been of the first to be attacked by the Muggles. Wizard civilians, he remembered laughing hysterically, attacked by Muggles without cause. There was no reason for those people to die.

He remembered Parvati Patil standing alongside her sister in the shelter. Both had survived their families. Their children, the Patil-Avid twins and the Patil-Camri twins, had been completely incinerated in one of the explosions. Their husbands had raised shields but the reverberations following the fulminations cracked their wands and the backlash of the shield collapse was fatal. They stood as Petunia did half a decade years later – as vilomahs and widows. He remembered Cho Chang, her black hair streaked with grey, dead on the floor, discarded by the ragtag team of healers when her burns were too severe to treat. He remembered Draco, white face scarred horrifically down one side from the Second Wizarding War, and with new burns near the hair line and his left eye, and with gradually larger lines from where the glass exploded from the earthquakes. The same bombs that took Harry's hand had also taken Draco's own wife away from him. He remembered the blond's haunted grey eyes, one of them slightly lighter than the other because it was blinded in the initial blast that destroyed Malfoy Manor, taking everything from him. He remembered how Draco hugged his own seven year old, little Scorpius, to his chest long after he was declared dead, a bit of shrapnel still imbedded in his chest. He remembered Dennis Creevey – still so startlingly similar to his brother – performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on his Muggle father, in vain. Harry remembered the cold look in his wife's eyes when he awoke beside her in the shelter.

Harry remembered running from those first bombs. He was one of the lucky ones. Since he was Muggle-raised, he had learnt about the Blitz. Tom Riddle, he remembered thinking vaguely at the time, had lived during the Blitz. That was the last thought he had before he collapsed from exhaustion and pain. Thankfully, the healers told him later, that Muggle bomb cauterised his wrist otherwise he would have died from blood loss. His wife, thank God, had caught an emergency Portkey and had managed to get to the shelter in a relative amount of safety.

He awoke, and smiled relieved at his wife, with bandages on his right arm and shrapnel scars on his legs, below his knees. Her hazel eyes were red and swollen, her hair was tied back in a quick bun, and her smile was gone forever. He remembered the relief freezing on his face and his cheeks blanching. His eyes widened and they immediately searched the room. Jay was still at Hogwarts – the Muggles couldn't have gotten to Hogwarts. It was impossible. Al, his curls and his bright green eyes, was curled up against him on top of him on the cot.

When he awoke, his daughter was dead. Ginny had held her too closely. She suffocated.

It was with that thought in his mind – countless memories of loss and pain and horrifying fire – he opened his eyes to the shocked blue pair of Albus Dumbledore's.

Apple Blossoms

The blood-caked face seemed inhuman when the lids slowly, painstakingly opened, weighed down by red and brown excretions. His black eyelashes were clumped together and his lids were swollen and reddened. His sclera flashed a dangerously yellow and pink mixture and he seemed so tiny with his knees drawn to his chest and his arms seemingly holding himself together. His hair stuck out at odd-angles, tangled on the top of his scalp where someone must have body grabbed him and dragged him by the roots of his hair. His mouth was drawn in a pursed-frown and his eyebrows, or what little could be seen of them beneath the stains, were tensed. His wide almond-shaped eyes were bared and flat, glazed over pools of green that were both too young and too old.

Emotional and yet… stoic. Unfeeling. Cold.

That was what Albus saw that day, so long ago. A little boy, so small and so ruined by his experiences at far too young an age. He would always be too young for what he had seen that day. Albus couldn't even imagine how it must have looked to a child – a man appearing out of nothing with a crack and a smile that twitched and turned sideways, silky dulcet tones on an acidic purple tongue, an alabaster snow-white face, eyes redder than the blood that coated the walls, and gentle piano fingers that bruised and bit and bled him. Was Tom still the same boy who could flirt and flutter and then murder and bring misery within the same breath? Was he still the slick, charming Slytherin? Did he knock and invite himself to dinner or did he simply come in with a bang and a bash? Did he shake Harry's hand before he raised his wand to torture, to rend, to summon unholy Gehenna with every word and stroke of the hand? Those flat green eyes, Albus said after everything was done, were more horrific than anything else he had experienced. The flat, blood-stained eyes of a child who just watched his family die a gruesome death.

Albus knelt, smiling suddenly as tears rolled freely, "Merlin and Morgause, you're alive! Thank Merlin! Thank holy Brigid! Thank all that is good and holy that you're alright, my boy." He reached out, into the cupboard and gathered the child up in his arms, careless of the blood staining his purple robe and his dancing snidgets. He pulled the minute form close, burying the brunet head into his shoulder, his white beard turning red once more as it pressed against the blood stains. He didn't dare lift his wand for fear of how the child might react. He went to rub the cowlicked black hair down in a soothing motion when a horrific sound began in his ear. His eyes widened and his relieved smile drained away as he pulled himself back from the boy, from the screaming child whose eyes were rolled back in his head, from the boy whose once stone-cold face was now shattered around a vicious red oh-shaped mouth that shrieked a primal sound of horror and grief.

Albus' face nearly crumpled once more. How could he have been so stupid? The child was just traumatised so a _stranger _picks him up? How is that in any way comforting?

"Harry?" he began gently. The boy immediately silenced but backed into the cupboard. He turned his head away and curled up against the wall. "Harry?" he began again, "I'm Albus Dumbledore. I've come to take you somewhere safe."

The boy shook his head.

"Yes, I have. I," he paused, "I was a friend of your parents."

He didn't react.

Albus frowned deeply, "Harry, my boy, come with me."

"Don't touch me," he whispered finally.

"Why not?" Albus asked after a moment.

The boy simply shook his head, "Just don't."

"It's alright, my boy, I'm – I'm a good man and I've come to take you to safety."

"Nowhere is safe. Everything is wrong. Everything has gone all wrong."

Albus' eyes desperately felt like crying some more but he had to stay strong, "Come, Harry. How about I give you a poti – some medicine, I mean, and then I take you away to somewhere safe and where the bad man won't hurt you anymore?"

The boy turned from the wall, looking into his sagely, wrinkled face. He shook his head after a moment of consideration, "No."

"Please, Harry."

He flinched and seemed to somehow become smaller.

Albus sighed and said, "I'm sorry, my boy," before he drew his wand.

He opened his eyes – cold, dead, flat – and stared at the fourteen inches of cedar wood filled with the heartstring of a tri-horned Roman Caterwauler. He raised his eyes to Dumbledore's, and, instead of panicking as Albus had expected, he seemed to relax. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something but he stopped himself. The boy simply stood up and easily stepped out of the cupboard. He leaned away from Albus as he exited the cupboard under the stairs and stood expectantly in the hall. This was troubling.

"Gather up your belongings," he prodded the boy, but the boy shook his head.

"I have nothing."

He frowned but waved a hand, Summoning a photograph of the Dursleys: Vernon and Dudley stood in matching tuxedos behind his thin wife who was seated in a chair. There was no evidence of Harry ever being in the photo, as often happened when a house was Obliviated of the existence of a person, as was common – Albus vaguely recalled – during the First Wizarding War. Tom was never just satisfied with murder; he wanted _annihilation _of his enemies. He wondered if he should say as much to the boy who was staring at the photo with a peculiar expression. The child's hand reached for the frame and gingerly, the boy refused to touch him as he took the frame into his arms.

He ran his thumb over each face in the photo. "This never happened," the boy declared after a moment of looking at it. Albus startled but before he could ask the boy had already continued, "This photo was never taken. I remember the photographer coming to the door but then I…." he drifted off, still touching the glass.

"And then what?" he asked gently. Had the boy been Obliviated himself?

Harry shook his head, mumbling idly, "For want of a nail."

The man made a confused sound but the boy said no more on the subject. He finally said, "Harry, let's go."

The boy sighed and gingerly wrapped his arm around Albus' offered, robed elbow. He said once more, "Don't touch me."

Apple Blossoms

He remembered watching London burn from a distance. He remembered the squealing of all of the innocent Muggles, the screeching women, the sobbing children, the screaming men. He could hear it, even seated on the broom high up in the sky. He recalled vaguely in the back of his head staring at the broken body of George Weasley, dragged out of the then-burning Diagon Alley. He had seen him strung up on a stake on the side of the road with hundreds and thousands of other innocent Wizards. George had watched the fire bombs drop over Diagon Alley, watching the Concealment Charms explode and dissolve on themselves as the Muggles in the jets sprayed out this strange neon orange liquid that sizzled and broke all Concealers. Diagon Alley was revealed to London and that was when the fire bombs dropped. George had sounded the alarm and had tried to kill the flames. The Muggles parachuted in and started shooting. George threw out so many Portkeys and set off countless self-destructing "pranks" he had invented during the Second Wizarding War. He single-handedly saved seven thousand six hundred and fifty two lives out of the approximated seventeen thousand five hundred Wizards in the Alleys – Diagon Alley, Horizont Alley, Vertic Alley, Knockturn Alley, Perpen Alley, Parallel Alley, and countless others. Others burnt in the flames, some were trapped in the rubble, some had dissolved in the orange liquid that killed Magic, and so many were shot. George had run down the streets, tossing out so many Portkeys and emergency transport gear and aid kits that he had left no help for himself. The Muggles eventually stormed his shop where he ultimately barricaded himself in with nearly five hundred other Wizards.

Every single one of them. From Mister Callis Gorgon at age one hundred forty-three down to little Margaret Olson at age five months and three days. Every single one was strung up along the streets of London as a "warning." But George? He got the special spot, crucified right on Big Ben for everyone to see.

The fire bombs on the Alleys occurred three weeks after the bombs that took his hand and his daughter.

Five months after the Alley Massacre, Harry raised his Elder wand and lit London alight. Fiendfyre rained down from the heavens. The battalion around him also raised their wands in unison, and cast the horrible curse as well. The Muggles had burnt so many of their families alive, shot so many, desecrated so many. Did any of them care that more than a third of the Wizard population had Muggle blood? Did any care that they shot on their own cousins? Some, their own children? How could they calmly raise those black spears and chain five month olds to the top to die of exposure? How could they shoot parents in the back of the heads for refusing to give up where they hid their children? How could they calmly stare Callis Gorgon in the eye, grandfather, great-grandfather, even great-great-great-great-grandfather to so many people and looking as elderly and as weak as anyone's grandparent and hang him off the London Bridge? Hermione's parents, murdered by extremists at their practise, hung under London Bridge as well, beside an Anglican priest whose daughter was Muggle-born. He refused to give her up to the Witch Hunters. Beside the priest was a pair of six year old little girls, the Anglican's daughter and her twin sister. The sister wasn't Magical though. The Muggles had not only declared war on the Magical Community but on anyone with the slightest bit of emotion or familial tie to that community.

The people in the air around him – the ones who followed his motion, his symbolic request to scorch _their _Alleys, kill _their _wives and husbands and children, burn _their _houses, ruin _their _livelihood – they were all from London, too. They had lived their whole lives on a hidden half of London, and in the blink of an eye, the secrecy, the safety was taken all away. Now, he thought bitterly – thinking of the face of baby Lily, thinking of the dead-eyes of Draco as he was holding his dead son so tenderly, of the cold turn of his wife's lips, of George's mutilated body on Big Ben, nearly as young as his late twin – that it was _their _turn now, the Muggles' turn now. They rained fire and despair on Wizards' heads, and now a Wizard's fire returned them.

He had felt so strong and so weak when he cast that horrible fire, watching it consume houses, businesses, flats, people alike. Buildings that looked as if they had survived wars and centuries in London were consumed by the Magical flames. He wondered briefly if he was more like Salazar Slytherin than Tom Riddle was – Tom would never have burnt London. He lived during the Blitz. London was eternal in his eyes – bombs fell, men marched on with guns and tanks, armies rose and conquered, but nothing could defeat London. Every roadside stake went up in the horrific red spirals that tinged at blue and green and purple and black and white all at once. Everyone on those stakes were long dead. It was a mercy to be cremated finally, for their souls to finally be put to rest.

Salazar Slytherin lived on the edge of the era between the mysticism of pre-Christian Britain, with the pagan Vikings and Nordics still singing with their scops and bards of men who slayed the foul beasts and of enchantresses who helped and hurt those of their choosing. Beowulf, blessed by the gods, showing magical strength was a particular favourite in the then connected worlds of Magical and Muggle. Salazar, however, had also seen Christianity take hold, running through villages like fires in dry summer forests, with holy Catholic fathers shrieking of the horrors of the witches and the devil to their simple-minded churches. He had seen little children suspected of witchcraft beaten with rocks and sticks, women hanged, men stabbed with knives and pitchforks. He had seen families' homes lit alight because of a phrase "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." He was only trying to protect the Magical World by suggesting the denial of Muggle-borns at Hogwarts. And yet, it wasn't the Muggle-borns who brought the Magical World down. It was the arrogance of Tom Riddle, the last descendent of Salazar Slytherin, and his followers, and his idiotic decision to kill the Prime Minister for whatever reason.

Funny. Salazar Slytherin wished to save the Magical World, and his progeny destroyed it.

Harry Potter looked upon London and it burnt. It was the Third Great Fire of London. Big Ben scalded and the iron metal curled and the face began to melt and blacken. Firemen could do nothing and all of them burnt, as well. Bobbies tried to save a few people, but it only resulted in death. Muggles, if they were able, looked up and saw the Wizards hovering above. They couldn't shoot them down though – not without burning themselves to death. This time, he realised bitterly, it wasn't the Wizards whom they burned.

He turned at a sharp cry behind him and saw something that struck and scarred his very soul. London Bridge, he realised with shock and hysteria, was finally falling down.

Apple Blossoms

The boy did not react to Apparating at all, which was slightly worrying when Albus gave it some thought. A Muggle-raised child who had thought teleportation was a myth was completely alright with Apparating? No reaction? Not a gasp? Not a scream? Not awe? Of course, he reproached himself, the boy had just been through an ordeal where he just watched Tom Riddle magically murder his relatives before his eyes. Not much could surprise him anymore.

They walked through the fields of Hogwarts and the boy paused upon seeing the grand castle. Albus smiled genially and almost went to say something appropriately wise and eloquent but the boy simply kept walking. Of course, it wasn't as if the Kingdom of Great Britain lacked castles but it was usually a grandiose thing for a child, a mystical moment of seeing a four tower stone castle that was ancient and magical and taken from the pages of a fairy-tale (as one Muggle-born Ravenclaw had put it for him one year). He frowned and may have even pouted slightly, a bit put out that the boy wasn't at least a bit more wide-eyed. But then again, it was just a horrible ordeal the poor boy had been through. He wouldn't be up for being impressed for anywhere between a month and a century.

"Harry?" he began quietly.

"Yes, sir?" the boy responded easily, not breaking his stride at all.

"I am not sure if I told you, but my name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am headmaster at this school, Hogwarts. It's a school for Witchcraft and Wizardry. I don't think your relatives told you, but – " Albus told him, being cut off by the boy's sudden pause on the moor leading up to Hogwarts.

"They didn't," he spoke, near silent in the evening light of the moon, "Tell me about magic, that is. They didn't tell me anything."

"Yes," Albus nodded, "I specifically told them not to tell you anything that might be damaging."

The boy turned, green eyes glinting strangely in the moonlight, until the left side of his face and his scarlet lightning-bolt scar was lit in the night. He quirked a queer smile, "They wouldn't tell me anything anyway. They hate magic," he blinked, smile dropping suddenly and eyes widening peculiarly, "Hated. They hated magic. They're dead. Even Dudley is dead."

Albus reached forwards, hand resting on the boy's shoulder, "It wasn't your fault, my boy. Tom is senselessly violent on his best days. He is a tortured soul. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It's a miracle you're still alive, actually. Your family saved you. They loved you and they saved you, always remember that."

The boy raised his eyes to Albus' blue with a frown. Albus blinked and asked, "What is it, my boy?"

"They didn't love me," Harry said, enunciating every word clearly, as if Albus wasn't quite sane, "They hated me. I represented everything that ruined their lives – magic that left Petunia in the dust, old money that Vernon could never touch, Hell, I was even the antithesis to Dudley – I was thin and strong, where he was rotund and flabby. In all honesty, I'm surprised you didn't know."

"What do you mean?" Albus asked slowly, eyes widening at every word the boy spoke in that monotonous, matter-o'-fact tone, "How was I to know?"

Harry turned fully until their faces met completely, "_He _knew. He knew within seconds of meeting me. He said I was special. Strong. Cold. Like him," he shook his head, "Of course, I'm not like him. Not really. He's a bigot and a freak and mass-murderer that kills for the rush it gives him. He likes his women bleeding and screaming, tied to the bed or hanging from the wall, with their intestines spilling out on the floor. He likes to rip skin from the bone, to carve poems into muscle, to stew a pot full of children's eyes and feed the broth to their mothers and fathers, to wave his fingers and have fire burn every memory from a person's skull until they are little more than a Demented criminal. But there is something he got right though, calling us alike. After all, we're both halfbloods. We're both brunets. We're both despised by the people who were supposed to take care of us. We hate each other so badly we could blot out the sun with it. But, I'm not like him. I'm not. I'm _not_," he insisted.

"I know you're not," Albus said wearily, feeling the entire weight of the world falling upon him as the child spoke, whispering facts a _child had no right knowing _as if everyone should know them, as if everyone had been forced to watch his relatives die – relatives who happened to despise him of course! Of course, Albus thought idly in the back of his mind, it is possible Tom had pushed the thoughts into the child's head. No one hates their child that much, not one of their own blood! Tom, though tragic, was understandable because he was in an orphanage. Who could expect a well-treated orphan child from a Muggle background? Harry was Petunia's nephew! No one mistreats their own blood, surely. The house and the family were obviously Obliviated, and the boy was memory-charmed.

But, Albus did not understand the fact that the Wizarding World and the Muggle World had clearly defined differences in culture and tradition and in values that only someone divided between worlds could understand. The Wizarding World, as Harry had put in a conference with the Muggles nearly three decades into the future, is basically a preserved nineteenth century with women in long dresses and expected to be modest and chaste, with men expected to be gentlemanly and chivalrous and couth at all time, with orphan children taken in for a trade or training but otherwise abandoned, with classism at an all-time high. The Wizarding World is nearly pre-civil rights, with children able to work at as young as six as apprentices, with abuse all but unknown because few pure-bloods are aware that the Muggles know that hitting one's child or spouse is detrimental and therefore unacceptable. The Muggle World is nearly two centuries ahead of the Wizarding World in all societal, technological and governmental matters in Britain. The Muggles value peace, prosperity, love, faith, charity, and humanity – whereas British Wizards value money, status, alliance, bravery, polite behaviour and chivalry. In any dealings between the two, one has to imagine being a conquistador coming across the Mayans in the New World.

Apple Blossoms

He breathed, watching the frosty clouds form around his mouth with every exhalation. His eyes were cold but alive. He stood in a cathedral in Northern Ireland, standing amongst the bloodshed. Bodies spilled around him, hair splayed, blood sprayed, excrement, eyes, and babies strewn about carelessly. He tugged at his cloak idly, pulling it tighter around him. His lips were lined at the sides, prematurely many Wizards might say, with his black hair lined at the roots with grey and white lines. His left hand was gloved and his right was bare and skeletal. He had taken a bone from every man in the church – from every man he had carelessly slaughtered – and crafted it. Every bone was etched with runes and symbols, and the blood of some of the infants he had used to bind it together.

He reached into the pocket of his cloak, retrieving the ring. He stared at it, at the black octahedron centred on the silver metal in a snake-like grip. He was tempted to spin it thrice, but he had killed too many, watched too many die to survive the alluring temptation of keeping them grounded around him. Spirits are not wont to stay on Earth. He slipped the cool tarnished silver down the sinewy white bone of one of his new fingers until it settled on his ring finger, shrinking slightly to match the bone. He felt happiness, a brief flash of pleasure, a hint of righteousness, but his mouth no longer moved into that strange not-grimace that some dared name a smile. He splayed his fingers idly, watching the ring move on the bones. He couldn't feel it of course – bones don't have nerve endings – but to give the command to move and watching it comply for the first time in nearly a year…. No one could possibly imagine, unless they lost a limb themselves. Some might have cried, others might have laughed but he simply watched it in awe and gratification.

Harry turned at the sound of feet crunching the snow beneath dragon-hide boots, his black hair whipping around his head before settling again, falling against his jawbone in curled wisps. He stood tall and proud, tow-hair cut once more so that only pieces touched his ear and wisped about past his hairline. He was frowning on half of his face, and the other half was whole but unresponsive due to the nerve damage. One eye was lighter than the other because it was blind. The scars ran across his left cheek, and the four newer pink lines glared from his hairline to his chin, from where the werewolves attacked him. Draco stepped inside the cathedral, eyeing the fantastic stained glass, the blond man with the wavy hair and the soft face surrounded by a golden circle, all splatted with browning red. He reached into his own dark blue cloak, retrieved a slim fag and lit up with the tips of his fingers. "Who's that?" he asked, still eyeing the man.

"That's Jesus," Harry said gruffly, "I presume."

"Jesus?" Draco mouthed, as if he was tasting the syllables, before cocking his head like a puppy, "Who is he?"

"Um," Harry blinked, "Muggle religious figure. People worship him as a god. I'm not really sure, I wasn't raised with a concentrated religious education."

"Why do people worship him?"

"He, um, apparently brought people back from the dead and healed people and stuff like that. I don't really know much about him," Harry told him, "I know the basics. He was apparently born from a virgin – Mother Mary," he gripped the blond's shoulder and turned him to another stained glass picture, this time of a woman with her hair covered and she was looking balefully down at a little baby, "Who raised him with her husband Joseph. He gained a following of disciples and converted a bunch of people. He was sold out by one of his disciples, Judas, and he was crucified by the Romans. Then, after three days, he rose from the grave and ascended to heaven as a god or something."

"He sounds like a Wizard. Why do they worship him if they hate us?" Draco asked, looking so young and old at the same time.

"Don't ask Muggles for logic. Half the time, before they started killing us off they were killing each other off because half the Muggles don't even believe in Jesus. Some of them go for Allah or Jehovah, hell some go for Satan. I don't really know. Muggles have been making circular arguments for millions of years and they'll keep doing it until we're all dead," Harry said before he gave Draco a strange glance, "Why are you here? I'm about to do it."

Draco tore his gaze from the woman on the window and trailed his eyes down to Harry's new hand, "Blood Magic is illegal, you know."

"The Ministry is dead."

"I know," he nodded, before his grey pair touched with Harry's green, "Are you really going to do it?"

"I killed forty-one virgins," Harry said gravely, "In cold blood. They were nuns and monks and a handful was with the parish. I then proceeded to bleed seven infants dry and slaughtered their families afterwards. I dug up the grave out back, I doused all of the candles with holy water and tainted it with wine. I boiled a man's head in one of the barrels in the basement. I took the heart of a prostitute and baked it in the kiln upstairs and I took the ribs of a pregnant woman. I ripped the legs and wings off of five hundred doves and ravens and crows. I – "

"I understand," Draco nodded, looking a bit too pale in the frost with a tinge of colour under his jaw, "Why stop now? That's what you're thinking. I have done this horrible thing. I have done so many terrible things. I raided this place and killed these people. Why should I stop now? What do I care? My wife is dead. My children are dead. Why shouldn't I kick back and watch the world burn? Drink some of Ogden's Finest, light up, down my poisons and laugh at their suffering like they laughed at mine," he turned though, until his eyes met the blue ones of the European version of Jesus, "But then again, are you really going to do it?"

"I've done Necromancy," Harry told him, staring at the blond hair facing him, "That's punishable by life in Azkaban. I have done Blood Magic. I'd get the Kiss if the Ministry was still in business. I have killed thousands. I deserve death. I know that. Why should I stop? Give me one reason. Think of your son, Malfoy. I could bring him back if this works. I could bring them all back. Permanently. I could bind their souls in golems. I could make them grow. I could give them feelings."

Draco turned slightly, his blind left eye rolling dumbly about, his scars from the initial bombings shiny and white in the church light, "Why are you starting with him, though?"

"I have a thousand reasons. It might not work, so why should I care if he doesn't come? Why should I be disappointed if I fail with him? I could destroy the body by accident – should I do that with anyone else? My wife, perhaps?"

Draco sighed, turning once more away, "You're not going to bring them back. Not Ginevra. Not Lily. Not James. Not even Al or Scorp or even Astoria. The dead should stay dead. You and I – we know that. I can understand," he began, anger tinging his raspy voice, "you lying to your little Mudblood or her Blood-Traitor, or to the generals, but," he turned again, eyes hard and enraged, "don't you dare lie to me. You know he'll make the world burn in ways you can't even imagine!"

"I'm bringing back Voldemort, Draco," Harry nodded, watching him flinch backwards easily, even now, "because if I do it right, he'll kill them all. He'll laugh. And then he'll die. Easy as can be. If I do it wrong, all well. I'll try someone else that I don't care about. But it's strategic, even you can realise that. If I do it right, he'll be the strongest amongst us. If I do it wrong, who cares?"

"And if you do it right, but you can't do it anymore?" Draco offered, snarling, "That's happened. Necromancers losing all ability. Don't lie, Potter, it's unbecoming of a Gryffindor."

Harry sighed, "I don't plan to raise anyone else. Not this way. Black Magic turns all souls it touches. I understood that when I started this. Don't act like I'm a stupid kid throwing _Sectemsempra_s around anymore."

"So why do you lie?" he asked.

"Do you know why Necromancy is so evil, Draco?"

"Because it is inherently unnatural to reanimate the dead and trap a Veiled Soul in a living body?"

"Because of the requirements," Harry told him. He flexed his bone hand and waved at the bodies around him, "Forty-one devout virgins, a pregnant woman's ribs, infant blood, vilomah grief – those are some of the requirements to raise _one _body and keep it indefinitely – to return magic, memories, and encourage growth. I picked Voldemort because he can do this. He will not fret over these innocents dying. He won't be turned to Darkness or prematurely addicted to Blood Magic. He already is."

"This is a grave evil," Draco puffed, breathing smoke into Harry's face, "There is no turning back from this."

"You think I don't know that?" he asked, "I understand what I'm doing. Now get out of my face. I have a ritual and a vessel – not mine before you suggest it – so if you stick around, you might be dragged through the Veil or something."

"I'm with you, Harry Potter," Draco said, "I have been since I was eighteen years old. I trust you not to lose control. I trust you to do this right. I trust you to save us all. I always have and I always will."

"I don't know how you have such faith," Harry responded, tone slightly relaxed, "You shouldn't have to watch this."

Draco nodded, dropped the cigarette and looked once more up at the stained glass and said, "It's funny that the darkest magic requires holiness."

Harry gave him a wry smile, "Yeah, well, what do Muggles know about holiness?"

The blond nodded, and with a crack, the blond disappeared and the remaining brunet sighed as he began the end. He looked at the large suitcase he had brought with him and at the carnage around him. Then he looked back up at the blood-stained holy figure and said, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. And I'm damned. I get that. You don't get to damn us all, though. You damn me and you damn him. That's it. Okay?"

He knelt at the suitcase, opened it up and picked up the small body of an eight-year old, brunet, green-eyed, and very dead child. He had cast the stasis nearly immediately after he had passed with this exact moment in mind and he whispered quietly, "Happy birthday, Tom."

**I'll try and update a few more times in the foreseeable future, but I am competing in a challenge against my writing friend/contemporary where you have the Big Twelve in genres (romance, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, historical, adventure, thriller, horror, comedy, westerns, experimental, and poetry) and have to write comprehensive, good stories in every genre and complete it between the beginning of June and the end of August, which is why it looked like I abandoned some stories, even though I had some pre-written. Fanfiction was "illegal" during the writing period, but I was given a leave of absence to do it because the guy I'm competing against (sworn to secrecy), thus I took a break not to give myself an unfair advantage.**

**EDIT 7/30: Corrected a few grammatical mistakes and few mistakes for continuance. 3:00 AM is not good for the Grammar Nazi. **


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